Internet usage has become immense and promises to be much larger in the amount of information stored and made available to it users. In fact, the quantity of accessible information content and the number of requests for information are growing much more rapidly then the ability to deliver the desired information. This delivery is limited by the power of the available processors, database machines, and communication bandwidth available and limited by the ability of the humans and their local computers (or electronic devices) to receive and process the data returned. Considerable research has been carried out to create more efficient search engines that attempt to minimize the actual data access, data communications, and querying required to satisfy the user's real need.
The great thrust of the Internet is characterized by the thrust of the “World Wide Web,” suggesting that all of the information stored, worldwide, can be accessed by all of the users, worldwide via increasing numbers and types of wired or wireless computers, such as workstations, personal computers, cell phones, pagers, and personal organizers, just to name a few. Research, applications, and usage have been concentrated on this worldwide accessibility, such that the reach and access of a Web user seems limitless.
However, with the apparent focus on increasing a user's reach and access to volumes of data, the Internet and World Wide Web, at times, is a forum of scarcely tapped potential on a community level. That is, consumers and product and service providers have realized only marginal benefits from the Web in their mutual conduct of community level business transactions.
It is believed that as much as 85% of a consumer's purchases occur within 20 miles of the consumer's residence. Yet, presently, the Web does not link local consumers with local providers of goods and services in a scalable and efficient manner.